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Whiteboard Friday - Local Search Inclusion with David Mihm

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

David Mihm, Local Search guru and author of the new Local Search Ranking Factors, stops by Whiteboard Studios to discuss how business owners can get listed in Google's Local Search Results.

Despite how powerful local and geo-targeted search has become, only a tiny fraction of businesses actually claim and verify their listing with Google (via the Google Local Business Center). The vast majority of listings are cobbled together from crawl data and information from trusted sources like the Better Business Bureau and other business directories such as InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze.

Watch this video to learn how the engines build their local business listings and what you need to do to ensure you show up when your local customers perform searches.

"It's amazing how well this works. So easy to game right now that it's sure to be abused and shut down, but for now, it really works!"

I doubt it will be shut down, why would google turn away good information into their directory? This is differant than normal SEO for the fact that as a marketer for your client IE a small business owner you are putting corect address and phone number and better info for Google's customers.

The ONLY thing that could be considered "GAMING" is tweeking the business name/title to include a few stuffed terms. It takes alot of back links and user content to bring a LBC listing to a decent ranking in a large city or for a competitive business type.

I have submited many small business profiles into the LBC and have seen great results, it does require some expierance to know how things will effect these listings again very differant than a normal SERP listing.

Actually, Google has just updated their policy to explicitly forbid ANY additional keywords in business title...how strictly they enforce that (and whether there is any manual enforcement) remains to be seen.

I agree that it in terms of ranking, it still seems to be working well for plenty of businesses...

Though I have placed quite a few customers at the top of the list for major search terms in major markets (Dallas, LA, Philly..etc) with a bare two 3rd party weblinks on their LBL. It can be done...Google just needs to see something out there verifying what you claim.

If you're talking about duplicate content at Google, then absolutely not. Multiple LBC listings with the same address or phone number are considered a MAJOR negative ranking factor and can lead to penalty.

But in terms of "duplicating" ("syndicating" is probably a better word) your information on OTHER websites, this is definitely a good idea. I'll talk more about this next week.

Great video David. A serious issue I'm having with Google local business is that the listing I have doesn't show up anymore. Type in "Realtor Stillwater, MN" and see that there's only 1 result. This wasn't the case a couple months ago, and there's definitely more than one Realtor in this town.

If you search any nearby town in the same way, like "Realtor Woodbury, MN' or "Reealtor St. Paul, MN" you'll see the normal list of results. Any thoughts as to why this is happening?

Essentially, Google thinks that that particular result is the single most relevant for that particular search query. Think of it as the Local equivalent of sitelinks. Those of us in Local Search refer to that kind of result as an "Authoritative OneBox" so if you want to learn a little more about it, you could do some searches around that term.

Essentially McDonough is sending a super-strong signal to Google for those particular keywords.

Great video filled with lots of useful info, I really enjoyed your blog as well. If you have keywords in the title of your business listing for Google maps does that assist in any way with it's ranking. Would you consider it a ranking factor? I am not talking about keyword stuffing but relevant keywords that just happen to be in the name like the business name "Denver Muffler emporium" ranking for "Denver Muffler Shops"

I realize Google just got stricter on the naming of your listing but for new businesses just starting out it might be something to think about when creating your business name.

I would advise new businesses to use keywords when they're choosing the name of their business, when they incorporate, etc. Some existing businesses might even think about an official re-brand, re-filing business documents with your state, etc., if Local traffic represents a huge chunk of their business.

Lets say you have a website that caters to a certain demographic that is concentrated in specific geographic locations all over the globe, but you do not have a physical address in any of those places...

In this scenario is there a way to optimize for search and would it be a desirable outcome?

Pure "Local" search (i.e. as distinct from geo-focused organic search) requires a physical location. Google has been cutting down on the effectiveness of things like PO Boxes, UPS Stores, and Mailboxes Etc. in recent months...so you'll really need to get a physical presence if those markets are indeed important to your long-term business model.

Completely agree with your last comment David. Google has done a very recent crackdown ensuring that the days of locksmiths and plumbers having a "listing" within every town they service is out the window. In many blogs that have complained of such a thing...I notice now that the results are far more in tune with the recent requirements...Google wants content...wants validity (via 3rd party as you mentioned) and they want something tangible.. The last thing they are looking to have are spam listings...esp when so many are trying, legitimately, to have their business appear at the top of the results. If anyone is looking to invest time in research...consider the effect that the "10-pack" has had on IYP sites like Superpages.com and Yellowpages.com. I am willing to bet the effect is tremendous and drives another nail in the coffin of IYP claim's to have the internet's local business results. By the way David...I like your dashboard on your site!

I am new to local search. I am having a hard time grasping how to get Google search numbers for key phrases that include a city name. I not only do not know how to do that, I don't know how to get listed in local search for all the key phrases that might benefit my client.

I have sold SEO by being able to show my clients how many monthly/yearly searches they are missing out on per key phrase by not being ranked. But how do I sell local search when I do not know how many people are searching for key phrases with a city name in them?

Actually, Google has just to explicitly forbid ANY additional keywords in business title...I agree that it in terms of ranking, it still seems to be working well for plenty of businesses...

why would google turn away good information into their directory? This is differant than normal SEO for the fact that as a marketer for your client IE a small business owner you are putting corect address and phone number and better info for Google's customers.

The ONLY thing that could be considered "GAMING" is tweeking the business name/title to include a few stuffed terms. It takes alot of back links and user content to bring a listing to a decent ranking in a large city or for a competitive business type.

It still totally blows my mind how much this is overlooked or not done. Unfortunately, Google (as well as the other engines) haven't done enough to educate and get this out in front of business owners.

Still great value for SEO's to bring to their clients by including this as part of an overall strategy.

Interesting video. Althought in the USA there are allot of local business directories in my country, Portugal, the directories are very generalistic. Our biggest search engine doesn't have what a local business directory.

Mainly everything is separated by category and that's enought for them.

On other note. I'm 100% deaf on my right side. So I had a litle bit of a struggle to listen to the conversation as the sound of the mics came out separatly on each earing plug of my headphones. Any way to fix that?

I have talked to several Local SEOs from the UK & done some of my own research over the course of the last six months...it appears that the major UK data provider is The Local Data Company (probably equivalent to infoUSA in the U.S., and MarketLocation.com has been mentioned as well. Guys like Tom Critchlow, Rishi Lakhani, and Martijn Beijk are probably in a better position to answer that question than I am, though.

As far as making sure your listing is accurate on the additional engines, that is actually a critical part of the algorithm (as we'll talk about in WBF #2), so if you're starting from scratch, it's just as important.

See my comment above. The major UK data provider appears to be the Local Data Company...would not be surprised if Yell were very important either as a direct provider OR a quality scrapee (is that a word?) :D

One of the best Whiteboard Fridays and one of the best information on Local Business Results on the web. But the mentioned trusted sources are surely not only 4 or 5. Anybody came up with a good (in terms od "as much as you know") list of those? For different type of businesses, different countries?

Great video, helps validate or at least assure that what many of us have been thinking and doing is at least close to correct.

Google is obviously king in the local space but Yahoo has local as well and Bing now has local results much more prominent. I know that many of the same tactics (InfoUSA, Localeze) play a role with the other engines but it would be interesting to hear more specifics about those two engines and whether there are different tactics.